Quinta do Noval Vintage 2019 Port
€ 89.90
| Producer | Quinta do Noval |
| Region | Douro |
| Grapes | Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinto Cão, Sousão |
| Ageing | 18 months in wooden casks |
| Alcohol | 19.5%vol | pH: 3.63 |
| Serving | 12-15°C, decant before serving Keeps 2 days at most once opened |
Vintage 2019: fresh, lively and full of ripe red fruit, from a long harvest.
Tasting note
Deliciously ripe, full and exuberant, spicy on the nose, with very fine tannins and Noval’s classic purity and elegance.
The story
Noval goes its own way: if the wines are good enough, a Vintage is declared, even several years in a row. Selection is always strict, at most 15% of production. For 2019 that meant 2,780 cases, 14% of production.
2019 had a mild winter and a dry summer, but with lower than normal temperatures. Harvest began on 9 September and lasted six weeks, until 18 October. The musts showed wonderful natural acidity, and early tastings revealed pronounced aromas of ripe red fruit and remarkable liveliness.
The grapes are foot-trodden in the quinta’s stone lagares and macerate during fermentation for optimal extraction. The wine ages for eighteen months in wooden casks in the quinta’s air-conditioned cellars in the Douro before bottling.
Food pairing
A delicious digestif, also with rich aged cheeses, dark chocolate or chocolate mousse.
The producer
Quinta do Noval appears in the land registry as early as 1715 and lies in the Pinhão valley, in the heart of the Douro. In 1894 the Port shipper António José da Silva bought the estate, and his family ran it for almost a century. In 1993 Noval passed to AXA Millésimes, with Christian Seely at the helm, who had most of the vineyards replanted.
Noval’s most famous asset is Nacional: a small plot of ungrafted vines, never touched by phylloxera, right by the house. It yields a Vintage Port only in exceptional years, in tiny quantities. At Noval the grapes are still foot-trodden in stone lagares.
